


Advent: Ocean

by FyrMaiden



Series: Klaine Advent 2015 [15]
Category: Glee
Genre: Exotic Pets, Illegal Animal Trade, M/M, merfolk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 22:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5433149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine Anderson is a Pacific Siren, a merman captured for the pet trade and seized by Border Security. He's since made his home at the Dalton Aquarium, but all of that is going to change with the arrival of a new inhabitant...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent: Ocean

In the time he has lived at Dalton, Blaine has learned many things. He has learned, for instance, that if he closes his eyes and drifts on the edge of awareness, he can almost forget that the light above him isn’t actually the sun and that the cries of the birds and the lap of the tide are as synthetic as the rock beneath him. If he lies still, the warmth of the lamps will relax him, and condition his scales, and it will be like it was on the rocks and sands of his home. It’s an illusion, but it’s a good one, the sounds of the other tank inhabitants fading into white noise as he basks.  


Inevitably, there will be the thump of a fist on the glass of the tank, though, and the illusion will shatter. Blaine will slip silently from his rock back into the water, and he will wait patiently for the child to be lead away by a parent. He has learned to tolerate being stared at by the humans who visit the aquarium, but the thump of fists on the plexiglass and the noise of children talking all at once still makes him nervous.  


It’s been three years - or three summers, at least, because Blaine counts them; there have been distinctly separate times that the main tank at the aquarium, his tank, has been opened to the outside, so that he and his tankmates can bask outside, beneath the actual sun - since he was brought to Dalton Aquarium and Marine Biology Laboratory. He arrived cold and sick, his scales shedding and dull, a transfer from Fish and Wildlife, who’d received him from Border Security when no paperwork could be produced by the poacher trying to import him.  


The biologists at Dalton had nursed him back to health, and then, because no one working at the aquarium had seen a Pacific Siren as close as they were to him, not since they’d started studying mer-biology properly, the decision had been made to keep him. Once he was healthy and strong enough, he’d been transferred to main tank in the aquarium visitors center, and given a name. Blaine. In her chattier moments, the girl assigned to his care (Marley, who is gentle and always asks if she can touch him, explains what she is doing before she does it) says that ‘Blaine’ means ‘yellow’ in old Gaelic, like the colours of his mandarinfish tail.  


Just as Blaine settles, finally, into the routine of the tank, everything around him changes. The rocks are moved to create inlets and caves, and then an extension is built that requires everyone being moved into temporary accommodation. When he asks Marley what is happening, clinging to the side of his little tank, the yellows of his scales turning ochre with worry, she tells him to try to relax.  


“There’s someone new for the tank,” she says. Blaine frowns. The tank already has five of them in it. Why does it have to be changed for one more? Marley reaches out and strokes his hair, pushes it back from his face. He whistles low in his throat and pushes his face into her hand, and she says, “We think he’s around the same age as you, but it’s hard to tell. He doesn’t speak much.”  


Blaine isn’t surprised. He’s seen plenty of temporary inhabitants of the large tank come and go, and many of them carry deep scars in more than just their skin. There’s a Pacific Pink, whom the biologists and veterinary specialists call ‘Sam’, whose company Blaine enjoys a lot, but Sam is often quiet, locked in memories he can’t leave behind. Blaine has managed to ascertain that he was rescued from a farming facility, but beyond that, Sam’s history is a blur. He carries with him all the scars of his lost podmates, though, and the small, disparate group in the tank can’t quite compensate.  


When they are returned to the main tank, it is half again the size it was, a new river course with its own current occupying one corner. The only thing that hasn’t been moved is his rocks beneath the lights. Even the kelp groves and mangroves where he sleeps have been moved. He sits on his rock and splashes his tail in the water, his shoulders hunched around his ears. Sam hauls himself out of the water to sit beside him on the rocks, and mutters below his breath, inaudible and incomprehensible to their human audience, that this new guy had better be worth the hassle.  


It’s another week before the tank’s new inhabitant arrives. Blaine sits on his rock and watches closely as the dry entrance is opened and Marley steps inside, followed closely by two men. One is one of the biologists who has studied and poked Blaine, measured his vocal range and pain receptors, his speed and strength, and whose badge - now that Blaine can read it - declares his name to William Schuester, and whom Blaine has decided he doesn’t much like. The other is younger, with thick chestnut hair and wide, terrified eyes. Blaine feels himself shifting closer to the edge of his rock to see him better, and he knows he makes a noise when the younger man looks up, because Marley glances up at him as well. He covers his mouth, and dives off of the other side of his rock.  


When he reemerges from his hiding place, he finds Sam sitting on his rock with the strange man beside him. He hauls himself up on his other side, and watches the man’s feet where they splash in the water.  


“What are you?” he asks, and the man cants his beautiful head, lets the language sit in his ears for a moment, and then whistles his own response.  


“Lost,” he says. Blaine frowns at the his feet again, at his toes and his calves, and watches as the other tank inhabitants appear slowly from below.  


“No,” Blaine says eventually, and the man turns his head and smiles at him, and Blaine feels his face go red.  


“Selkie,” he says. “But I don’t - I don’t remember -”  


Tears pool in the depths of his blue eyes, and Blaine reaches to brush them away. He shrinks back slightly, and Blaine withdraws his hand, flicks his own tail in the water and offers a smile of his own that makes the man’s cheeks go pink in turn.  


“What’s your name?” Sam asks, and Blaine, simultaneously says, “Can you swim at all?” The man’s head turns between the two of them.  


“Kurt,” he says. “My father called me Kurt. And I - I can, but not - not well.”  


Blaine nods his head, and levers himself into the water, holds out a hand for Kurt to take. “We can teach you,” he says. “Do you trust me?”  


Kurt hesitates for a moment, and then reaches behind him for his skin. Tugging it around him like a cloak, he reaches for Blaine’s hand and slides slowly into the pool, skin moulding to his body as he submerges. There is a quiet splash beside them, and Blaine watches Sam point to the new hollows in the rocks, to the quieter, hidden cavern in the middle of them, and Blaine nods his head. Breaching the surface, he takes a deep breath and pushes down into the water, pulling Kurt with him.  


All things considered, he decides, this new addition may not be so terrible after all. Kurt can interpret for him faster than he can write, and more accurately than he can sign. With Kurt, he can tell Marley everything she wants to know about his species, and what he knows of their basic biology.  


And, as Kurt settles into life in the tank and learns to relax, Blaine teaches him the secrets that he knows: that if you close your eyes and drift on the edge of consciousness, the heat lamp almost feels like the sun, and you can almost forget that the sound of seabirds isn’t real.


End file.
